Interpretation and text by Elena Cartotto
APTITUDE ARCHETYPES
Understanding your own archetype can be of great help in identifying your ambitions and learning to use the talents you possess, making order in the chaos of the stimuli that you receive from the outside world and that are often confusing: it is very easy, for example, especially for insecure or particularly empathetic people, to internalize other people’s expectations.
There have always been individuals who can exactly figure out, already at an early age, what they want to be in life, what their natural talents are and what kind of studies or career they want to pursue. Often, astrologically, these people are marked by a stellium of sign or house, or they have very powerful dominant planets that make them express themselves in specific working sectors: let’s think of the traditional association between Mars and sport or military life, but also of the competitiveness that this planet awakens, no matter what your job is. Another typical association is that between a strong Venus in the chart and beauty in both an aesthetic and artistic sense.
Most people, however, despite having pronounced tastes or being naturally inclined to do certain things, cannot immediately understand how to professionally channel their skills, especially at this historical time where everything changes so fast and you have to be ready to reinvent yourselves all of a sudden or seize the first good opportunity as it comes up even if it is not exactly what you were hoping for. Besides, there are those people who have taken a job, carried on with it diligently for many years just for the money, without ever really wondering what they could have done with their talents.
Assessing candidates from a psychological point of view and not only according to the skills they acquired in their course of studies or working path, is now an established good practice within the broad field of human resources, where someone who aims atachieving a position must prove to be suitable for the role and not vice versa. In this sense, aptitudes, intended as the natural inclination to understand, manage, carry out certain tasks, have a considerable importance.
An aptitude will hardly be so predominant as to exclude the coexistence of other inclinations: a highly creative personality can also be introspective, the communications skills can go hand in hand with management ones, or we will have scientific talent and economic flair capable of collaborating in a fruitful way. Of course, many other combinations are possible and in percentages to be defined.
The archetypes that are examined here are six: Prometheus or the creative, the Daimon or the guide, the Demiurge or the builder, the Cyclops or the planner, Atlas or the champion, Hermes or the communicator.
A pure archetype is a mere abstraction, even though there can certainly be a predominant aptitude: it is advisable to check at least the three main directions of our personality because it can lead to interesting suggestions about our studies or professional development. Each archetype actually indicates a particular psychological conformation and certain talents that can be expressed in specific crafts, arts and jobs.
The six archetypes include a summary divided into five identical parameters for each profile, but with different percentages depending on the greater or lesser presence of the above-mentioned parameters in that particular archetype. These items correspond to the so-called Big Five, that is the macro areas that are evaluated by human resources experts in the personality tests of candidates and that can be considered a fairly reliable model both theoretically and empirically.
These macro categories are the most reliable to explain the diversity between individuals and have been found in different cultures, ages, populations. They are: extroversion, open-mindedness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability/neuroticism.
Extroversion generically describes the impulse towards the outside, the other, social relationships; open-mindedness indicates curiosity, originality, creativity, rejection of stereotypes; agreeableness expresses sensitivity, altruism, a cooperative spirit; conscientiousness indicates accuracy, scrupulousness, method, perseverance, self-discipline; finally, emotional stability/neuroticism indicates personal safety, self-control, management skills (of emotions, people, relationships, events).
PROMETHEUS OR THE CREATOR
In mythology, one of the most prominent figures among the Titans, who were even antecedent to the Olympic gods we all know, was Prometheus, whose name, deriving from ancient Greek, means ‘the forethinker’. Prometheus was therefore a forerunner: he stole fire from the gods to give it to mankind and lead them to civilization. Plato even recognises a divine role in him: it was Prometheus who moulded man from clay, into which life was then breathed. Due to his role as a creator, Prometheus will be considered the inventor of writing, medicine, architecture, the inspirer of metalworking. He will become a symbol of human creative freedom and of the knowledge that derives from it beyond any attempt at ideological or religious coercion, precisely because Prometheus did not hesitate to fight against the gods in order to help the human being he himself had shaped.
Anyone who is astrologically marked by the archetype of Prometheus has the same spark within them, which is why they are often smart people. Their mental attitude is highly intuitive with a remarkable predisposition for analogical thinking. They hardly proceed by schemes, categorisations, standardised procedures: they get to foresee the unfolding of events before anyone else, thanks to a sort of flair, sometimes truly brilliant, which allows them to seize the connections between facts, causes, possibilities that can elude the regular logical path. They are able to find connections and references even between things that are apparently very distant from each other.
Like Prometheus, they have a tendency to instinctively reject the vision imposed on them by others about certain topics because they feel the need to always see things from original points of view, even if this can mean contradicting the majority. They don’t do that because they are contrarians, but because they feel the urge to get out of all that is known, already seen and accepted in terms of knowledge and practice, in order to go on unexplored paths that allow to redefine existing ideas and goals in a different way and to find new ones.
They can be particularly sensitive towards mankind or even be capable, while remaining detached, of embodying collective values in their own way of existing and working, but, above all, they are naturally inclined to understand before anyone else where the wind is blowing: they are one step ahead in terms of tastes and desires, often managing to be the first to propose totally new things that can easily become trendy.
Such an individual can certainly reflect and amplify common feelings, but this won’t imply a real need for contact with the other, from whom, in some cases, they may even want to escape.
The primary impulse of the individual who is marked by the archetype of Prometheus is to generate and create human, cultural and economic value independently, with the desire to give shape to their ideas and intuitions. If they cannot create, the Promethean personality will still try to transform and change what tradition offers.
They frequently feel driven by an inspiration they cannot explain and that, in part, results from the cultural heritage that belong to them and that they receive in terms of values, conceptual and operational tools, experiences passed on, readings.
They are individuals whose energy is hardly stable. They can frequently have ups and downs that also depend on their mood. However, there is always something exceeding in them: an excess of ideas, personality, enthusiasm, stubbornness, anger. In some cases, there is a real energy surplus that can be very useful to those who, in addition to creativity, have a histrionic personality that wants to find fulfilment and success in the spotlight, whatever this may be: on stage in a theatre, or in media politics.
They tend to be people who love working independently and who consider the expression of their vocation to be more important than the financial gain it can guarantee. More than other profiles, they are therefore able to handle the uncertainty and sense of precariousness that can result from choosing a certain type of path and career. This does not mean that they are unable to achieve financial success: on the contrary, if in their personality the archetype of the demiurge, the creator, is also significant, they can make a lot of money.
CAREER
Visionary and multi-aptitude entrepreneurs often present this archetype, which is also significant in the personalities of some famous entertainers, poets, writers, screenwriters, authors in the vast world of media, that is, people who always work creatively.
Among them we also have advertisers, copywriters, stylists, designers and even some scientists whose intuitions overturn existing paradigms.
Heads of State, leaders of companies or political movements often have this archetype in a significant position due to their role as trailblazers, their ability to take risks, because they are able to indicate the paths to follow and the programmes to fulfil by embodying collective needs.
BIG FIVE AREA
EXTROVERSION 20%
AGREEABLENESS 15%
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 15%
EMOTIONAL STABILITY 10%
OPEN-MINDEDNESS 40%
EXTROVERSION 20%
AGREEABLENESS 15%
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 15%
EMOTIONAL STABILITY 10%
OPEN-MINDEDNESS 40%
HERMES OR THE COMMUNICATOR
Hermes is one of the twelve gods of Olympus. He is the personification of the wind, of places of exchange, transit and commerce, and is always travelling, as he is the messenger of the gods and of Hades.
According to the myth, he is represented in the arts holding the caduceus in his hand and with wings both on his shoes and helmet. In the Homeric hymn dedicated to him, the essence of Mercury is immediately recognised, who is not only the Roman god to whom Hermes was a precursor, but also one of the ten fundamental planets in the astrological examination: “…a cunning trickster, a thief, a shepherd, a master of dreams, a spy in the night, a guardian of doorways, who soon became famous among the "immortals". Ruler of Gemini and Virgo, exalted in Scorpio, Mercury embodies all the vast symbology relating to the use of intelligence and communication skills typical of this archetype.
People who have a predominant Hermes can immediately tune in to the environment around them, managing to pick up the various signals as if they were a well-functioning antenna. They are not frightened by the diversity of places, atmospheres, people, behaviours and professional styles they come across, because they know how to recognise and decode them with amazing quickness of mind. This allows them to transmit, like a radio, exactly what they pick up by placing themselves on the same wavelength as their interlocutors. This attitude allows them to move anywhere with extreme ease, especially in today's variegated world of work by embracing, on a communicative level, the needs, directions of intervention, requests, marketing and training objectives of the most varied sectors.
The individuals marked by Hermes have no shyness whatsoever and, if necessary, they know how to move with shrewdness and determination, because their success also depends on the insights they have not only about people, but also about the right timing to take action: arriving five minutes later in certain cases and for certain activities can be lethal. At the same time, they are aware that they must not prove to be intrusive or suffocating, because some communicative roles require a lot of tact and diplomacy as usually happens when dealing with complex situations that involve public relations: fairs, congresses, workshops, seminars, debates. Dealing with the world of public relations is quite strategic and those who are marked by the archetype of Hermes often know how to build a wide range of personal connections over time that can turn out very useful to reach certain positions.
People with this archetype are also excellent moderators, capable of containing and directing the communicative flow. They know when it is time to speak and when it is time to be silent, how much space to leave for others and how much space to take for themselves. And, above all, they always keep listening and responding even when they are exhausted: they are, in fact, perfectly aware that their success is based on the relationship with others, whether it is immediate or mediated. Sometimes, they even have to know how to manipulate their interlocutors in order to be able to convince them in regard to the value of what they say, offer, sell, plan: those who run outbound activities or business in direct contact with customers, as happens for various shops and restaurants, must be, for a certain percentage, characterised by this profile.
Those who turn to certain human and/or professional categories to convey commercial, persuasive, but also informative or more specifically cultural messages, must then structure their message on various intersecting levels: the archetype of Hermes is capable of making this connection and of moving, like the god who represents it, not only in a spatial sense, but also in a mental sense, managing to pass very quickly from one level to another. For example, it may be required to know how to deal with a one-to-one relationship with one's interlocutor/client/student, as can happen for a professor giving a lecture, but then the same content must be conveyed by other means that require different communication strategies: let’s think of a trainer, who creates slides, a blog, a website, one or more pages on social media or creates role-playing games and simulations.
CAREER
They are extremely efficient individuals, regardless of the object or service they deal with, when it comes to plan advertising campaigns, organise events, find strategies that can promote services, consumer goods, but, above all, enhance the work of creative people. Call centre managers and employees, press offices have this profile, as well as a lot of marketing experts and media managers, with their related jobs: web writers, web content specialists, web community managers, digital planners and so on, all roles that were born and that are evolving thanks to the world of internet.
The same category also includes journalists, popularisers, pundits, moderators. Professors, teachers in general and trainers tend to fit this profile, since their communication skills and ability to organise educational programmes of professional updating and growth is their strong point.
BIG FIVE AREA
EXTROVERSION 30%
AGREEABLENESS 20%
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 15%
EMOTIONAL STABILITY 15%
OPEN-MINDEDNESS 20%
THE CYCLOPS OR THE PLANNER
The Cyclops’ aptitudes follow a mindset capable of being extremely focused on the goal to be achieved and on the procedures required to accomplish the mission.
The ancient myth of the Cyclopes, before Homer turned them into monsters, presents them as children of Uranus and Gaea: civilized beings, hard workers and friends of the gods.
Their main feature consists in having only one eye, and hence their name in the Greek etymology that combines the word “circle” with the word “eye”.
This single eye inherits the beliefs relating to the "third eye", which, as is traditionally known, is associated with higher wisdom and knowledge. This would explain the uncommon skills of the Cyclopes, considered exceptional smiths, masons, technicians. It was no coincidence that they were called by Zeus himself to make his lightning bolts.
The archetype of the Cyclops is therefore, among all, the most monodirectional one, that is, it best expresses itself when it is necessary to intervene on a specific problem or on highly specific issues, because it can proceed by consequential and logical steps, using an enhanced ability to concentrate and explore.
When they carry out their tasks, they can use both conceptual tools if, for example, they work in a theoretical research field, and practical ones, if they have to work on any machinery or test a procedure.
Those who present this profile tend to develop a strong inclination for control, which allows them to carry out very precise and delicate tasks. They are detail-oriented, they keep their focus for a long time, they have remarkable physical and mental stamina when dealing with stress, a quality that is needed for those who often have to work alone or in any case on a limited stage of a production cycle without interacting with other people
constantly.
They tend to be very responsible, as they are aware that they are performing delicate tasks that cannot be performed automatically by others. They are restrained and not very talkative, but they can be exhaustive when it comes to explaining working hypotheses, projects, mid-term and long-termgoals, and how they carry out their tasks. Therefore, they prefer the use of technical and specialized language and are not very familiar with the social dimension of their work, unless, of course, they have developed a certain amount of communication and relational skills.
They are perfectionists and unlikely to be satisfied with a standard result, and can stubbornly persist if they have not reached the quality level they had set out to achieve. This is also why they may seem a bit obsessive, inclined to repeat procedures that already seem perfect from the outside, or to reset projects without apparent flaws. Basically, the challenge for them is only with themselves as they hate making mistakes: they tend to foresee all possible objections and criticisms to their work.
They almost never improvise, they love to be prepared in their own field of expertise; this does not mean, however, that they can take prompt action if something breaks down, goes haywire, does not follow the program it belongs to.
They are better at understanding the functioning of things or the development of certain theoretical approaches than the mechanisms that regulate the psyche of people and the human relationships that derive from them.
Their predisposition for strategic thinking, their careful evaluation of every move, their excellent memory and their being result-oriented make them basically excellent executors of even complex projects.
CAREER
This profile can be found significantly in both university researchers who deal with very specific topics, and electricians, test drivers, health professionals, but also chemists, biologists, laboratory technicians, radiologists, biotechnologists.
Several IT professionals and engineers are marked by this archetype. If the technical-scientific talentis combined with an economic-financial one, the individual can evolve towards those highly demanded hybrid roles, in which the engineer is, at the same time, a manager and vice versa.
These people can actually show a predisposition for mathematics, geometry, science in general, drawing. If creative skills are also included, we can have architects and interior designers, but also brilliant artisans, or even some categories of musicians who know how to combine artistic talent and technical/performing skills.
Experts in legislation and administration etc. May have technical requirements, but if they work as lawyers or in contexts where the contact with people is required, they can be characterised by the coexistence of other profiles.
BIG FIVE AREA
EXTROVERSION 5%
AGREEABLENESS 10%
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS 40%
EMOTIONAL STABILITY 30%
OPEN-MINDEDNESS 15%
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